Action in Georgia reflects continuing hospital mergers | The Journal Record

ATLANTA (AP) – An Atlanta-area hospital system might take over the hospitals affiliated with Georgia’s solely public medical faculty.

Augusta College Well being System has signed a letter of intent to affix the Marietta-based nonprofit Wellstar Well being System.

It could be a part of a sequence of hospital mergers in Georgia and nationwide, as stand-alone hospitals turn into massive sufficient techniques to afford large investments in digital file techniques – and still have the market energy to barter extra profitable cost agreements with insurers.

Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare took over a three-hospital system based mostly in Augusta earlier this 12 months, pledging to speculate greater than $1 billion in upgrades and expansions over the following 10 years. That nonprofit group was named College Hospital, though it wasn’t managed by Augusta College.

Augusta College Well being System runs the 478-bed Augusta College Medical Middle and the 154-bed Kids’s Hospital of Georgia, each in Augusta. It additionally has regulatory approval to construct a 100-bed hospital in Grovetown, within the rising Columbia County suburbs of Augusta. The system additionally runs the Georgia Most cancers Middle in Augusta, and Roosevelt Heat Springs Rehabilitation and Specialty Hospitals in Heat Springs.

Within the 2021 fiscal 12 months, AU Well being Programs misplaced $28 million on $1.06 billion in income – which is the latest 12 months for which a state audit is on the market. Income included $30 million in state appropriations. The system has misplaced $63 million general since 2017, audits present. AU Well being Programs has been on the lookout for a associate since 2019.

The 2 sides say that the deal might additionally lead to an extra enlargement of the Medical School of Georgia by creating a brand new regional campus at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta. The medical faculty already operates a separate four-year campus in Athens, in addition to three two-year campuses for upper-division medical college students in Rome, Albany, Savannah and Brunswick.

The announcement additionally stated Augusta College and Wellstar would work collectively to develop on-line well being care to “create extra handy entry to care and supply extra individualized care no matter location.”

Wellstar runs 9 hospitals in suburban Atlanta, principally concentrated within the northwest suburbs. The system has confronted intense criticism in current months after it shuttered Atlanta Medical Middle close to downtown Atlanta and Atlanta Medical Middle South in East Level this 12 months.

Wellstar stated it misplaced $122 million on the two hospitals in 2022. However critics stated Wellstar pulled out with out giving native officers an opportunity to save lots of the hospitals, eliminating one in every of solely two top-level trauma facilities within the Atlanta space. This decreased obtainable medical take care of poor and principally Black sufferers, and shifted burdens onto remaining hospitals, regardless of its obligation to offer care as a nonprofit system.

Gov. Brian Kemp despatched $130 million in federal pandemic funds to Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta’s publicly owned hospital, to assist offset the influence of the closure.

The Board of Regents, which oversees Georgia’s 26 public universities and faculties, must approve any last settlement between AU Well being Programs and Wellstar.